The identity of the private health companies likely to run two new NHS treatment centres in the region will be revealed later this week.

Health chiefs on Tyneside, Wearside and Northumberland want to clear their waiting lists by bringing in one or more private health companies.

Under the radical scheme, millions of pounds of taxpayers money will be paid to the private firms over a five-year period.

During that time, the firms will be expected to carry out 400 eye operations, 1,600 day case procedures and 2,500 outpatient appointments.

The news that Newcastle Primary Care Trust is to invite private health firms to run two new Diagnostic and Treatment Centres (DTCs) marks the gathering pace of modernisation in the NHS.

Elsewhere in the region, the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust took an important step towards becoming a foundation hopsital when it launched a campaign aimed at recruiting local people, patients and staff as future members of the new NHS Foundation Trust.

A spokesman for the trust said the new foundation hospitals "will have more freedom to work closely with local people to develop health services to suit their health needs".

Both moves are strongly opposed by the main health service union, Unison.

Liz Twist, Unison's regional head of health, said: "If there is money to be spent on diagnostic and treatment centres, then that should be publicly provided so we can make the best possible use of what we have got.

"Involving the private sector in this way means that some of that money which we need to provide better services is going into the pockets of shareholders."

She said foundation trusts prepared the NHS for the further involvement of the private sector and that could not be to the benefit of local communities.

"They are re-introducing the idea of the internal market. We don't think that is the right way to go. The NHS and our hospitals belong to us already, we don't need to make them foundation trusts to do that."

An NHS DTC is already up and running at Bishop Auckland General Hospital, while a new NHS unit is being developed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said the preferred bidders for the new DTCs would be announced on Friday.